New Van Helsing flick will be even darker

Shane McGlaun, 1st July 2012

If you're a fan of Van Helsing, odds are you probably saw the Hugh Jackman film a few years ago.

With the Tom Cruise led Van Helsing reboot in the works, you might be wondering what path the new film will take. Fortunately, at least according to producers Robert Orci and Alex Kurtzman, the new movie will be darker than the Jackman film.

So far, we haven't heard much about the new Van Helsing because the producers have been so busy with other major projects such as Start Trek 2, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, and Ender's Game. However, in a recent interview with Crave Online Kurtzman opened up and talked a bit about the upcoming Van Helsing flick.

"Well, I don’t want to give away too much, because we are actually at the very beginning of talking about what to do with it. But I do feel like the Van Helsing that Anthony Hopkins plays in [Bram Stoker’s] Dracula is sort of the parody version of it, and the Van Helsing that Hugh Jackman played was obviously in a different place as well. I think that these kinds of movies have evolved a lot since then," Kurtzman explained.

"You know, The Dark Knight was a major, major corner-turning moment in the way that genre and superhero stories could be told. Really grounded in reality. Really grounded in really cool things. That’s what I’d like to do without sacrificing the fantasy element. We aspired to do that as well on Trek, you know, keep it 'real.' That’s such a different franchise than ‘Batman’, but that’s really what we wanted to do. And we’d love to do that with ‘Van Helsing’."

Frankly, I'm not generally a fan of super dark movies, but even I thought the Hugh Jackman film was too cartoonish for the Van Helsing most of us know and love. So yes, I'll be glad to see the new Van Helsing get back to a darker, more reality-based feel.

Unfortunately, between the busy producers and Tom Cruise's packed schedule, there is no indication of when the film will actually go into production, so being able to watch the movie in your local theater is obviously a long way off.